Very good posts here. Thank you all for sharing. Sunspace, I think we all (meaning men) have had the brain-shorting-out thing happen. It’s like an unconscious subroutine, that interrupts whatever else you’re doing, at least momentarily.
Since so many others have shared their experiences, I’ll share mine: as a kid I was gawky, poorly dressed, and looked like my hair had been cut by somebody using a bowl and scissors. It didn’t really matter. I wasn’t into girls. I wasn’t a “boyish” boy: at school, I had a couple of equally nerdy friends and that’s how I liked it. I was aware other boys were playing baseball, or “kill the queer” or whatever. I just had zero interest in joining them.
Then puberty kicked in. I was still gawky, but now I had acne, too. And I was suddenly, overwhelmingly, unpreparedly, obsessed with girls. I also started a new school, which was much bigger and much more *Lord of the Flies-*ish than the elementary school I’d been going too.
I also made, what was in retrospect, an unmitigated disaster of a decision: I wanted to be popular.
The results were utterly predictable, for anyone who is not a 12-13 year old boy. Instead of getting what I wanted, I became the opposite: a social pariah.
It took a couple of years of unrelenting misery, but I eventually decided to give up on the project, and go my own way. For me, that meant reading (as a means of immediate escape) and grade-grubbing (as a means of eventual escape).
I left my smallish hometown, went to college, and never looked back. Along the way something happened which I was not - at the time - consiously aware of: I became good-looking.
Women were interested in me. Men were interested in me. (There were a lot of gay men at the school I went to.) For me, nothing had changed. I was still the socially-awkward, introverted person I’d always been. So, as far as I was concerned, I took the interest as a sign of grace. I found myself in intimate relationships with women, without even trying.
Obviously, at the time, it was wonderful.
Looking back, I think there was a definite drawback. I never learned how to decide for myself who I was interested in (as opposed to simply choosing among those how seemed interested in me), and (2) I also never learned the separate skill-set involved in pursuing a woman and getting her to like you, despite the ever-present risk of rejection. In other words, I was lazy and fearful (of rejection). I did not realize that at the time, of course.
Anyway, fast-forward twenty years, and my looks have declined. Not substantially, but noticeably. (Specifically, I’ve lost some hair, and what I have left is rapidly turning white. In other words, I look older than I am: man, I miss that long wavy mane of hair I used to have.) I don’t hate my looks when I look in the mirror, but the person I’m looking at is definitely not as attractive as the one I saw 15 years ago.
As far as a noticeable difference: I haven’t really seen one. (I have noticed some of the older women I work with seem friendlier to me, but I have no idea why.)
I will make an admission: in the past, I’ve been guilty of not really seeing a whole class of women (and I’m not talking about women I know, but about strangers) who, for whatever reason, were below some unconscious threshold of attractiveness. I’m not saying I was mean to them, or slammed the door in their faces or anything like that: I’m just saying I just didn’t really notice them. They were “invisible”, as far as my unconscious radar was concerned. I’m trying not to do that.
I still ignore - (while not really ignoring) - especially attractive women, though. They seem not to want strange men to say anything to them. (Which, think, is understandable.) So, of course, I don’t.
Hell, even now (at 43) I’m probably more attractive than I think I am, even though a few years ago my weight crossed a line and these days I’m just really fat.
)